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Bold steps to reform children’s social care

Published: 18th November 2024

4 minute read

Family Rights Group welcomes bold new plans published by the Government today to reform children’s social care. It includes action to fix the broken children’s home market and a focus on keeping children safely in their family.

As ever, the devil will be in the detail. We will scrutinise the proposals closer and are ready to work with the Government to ensure reform meets the scale of the challenge.

Responding to the plans, Cathy Ashley, Chief Executive of Family Rights Group, said:

“Family Rights Group welcomes the Government’s vision for a children’s social care system where families get help early before their problems escalate, and that there is an unequivocal commitment to addressing child poverty.

“The charity’s mission is for children to live safely within their families, and we’ve consistently advanced ways to achieve this. We are therefore very relieved that the Government has heard this message and has made clear its priority is to keep families together.

“But we are mindful of the current picture. The child welfare system is in crisis. Local authorities are overstretched and overwhelmed and too often, children and families do not get the direct help they need early enough to prevent difficulties escalating. A culture of blame, shame and fear is leading to a mistrusting and risk averse environment. There are record numbers of children in the care system, many isolated living far away from family and friends and not having their needs met.”

Family led solutions

The Government’s plans include a new legal right for every family to be involved in decisions about their children before entering the care system. Family Rights Group has long campaigned for this to support children to remain safely with their parents, or to identify kinship carers where that is not possible.

To achieve this radical ambition and support more children to remain safely in their families, the evidence points to family group conferences as the best approach.

“Central to the Government’s proposals is the importance of drawing on the strengths of the family, including relatives and friends, to enable children to live safely within their family and avert them from entering the care system.  Currently, the support that family and friends can offer is not consistently explored before children are removed. It means there are children in the care system who did not need to be. They could be safely at home with their parents or raised by relatives and friends in kinship care, instead of with strangers.

“We congratulate the Government on its bold intention to mandate local authorities to give families the opportunity to come up with solutions before issuing care proceedings.  This could be key to driving culture change so partnership working between practitioners and families is at the heart of supporting children to be safe and thrive. However, for this radical ambition to be achieved, the offer to families must be of a family-led, robustly evaluated approach that has been tried and tested in the UK and abroad, namely family group conferences. They operate to clear standards and reduce the likelihood of a child entering or remaining in care. For children who cannot remain at home, they enable prospective carers to be identified from within the family.”

Opportunity for all children and young people

The Government also set out steps to improve support for children in the care system and care leavers, as well as all children in kinship care arrangements.

“Kinship care is now firmly on the agenda and we are proud of our work, with families and others, in putting it there. The Government has made welcome progress, accepting our proposal of a new local offer for kinship care families, commencing a financial allowance pilot, and a new expansion to the support offered in schools by Virtual School Heads. But it isn’t enough. Kinship families are struggling to access therapeutic and special educational needs support for their children. Too many kinship carers are forced out of the labour market and into hardship. Financial support for special guardians is a postcode lottery. Many carers find themselves self-representing in court to avoid costly legal fees. We will continue to press Government to take further actions to transform the support system for kinship families.

“The care system is currently failing far too many children. The Government has announced radical and welcome measures to raise the standard and provision of children’s homes and crack down on profiteering.  They have rightly announced their intention to expand Staying Close so it is a national offer for care leavers. But they need to go further.  We all need people to turn to for practical and emotional support. Yet the care system too often breaks relationships for children in care. That is why we are calling on Government to make it an entitlement for all children in care and care leavers to be offered Lifelong Links, so they are supported to connect to those who love and care about them.”

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